Prologue
My mother always told me never to worry about tomorrow, because now was all that mattered. And this had been true for a total of exactly fifteen years. For fifteen years I lived with my beautiful young mother, in a small apartment that I would always call home. And no matter what our situation, whether we had enough money to pay the next electricity bill or if there'd be another shooting in the building, we always got through things.
My mother is the most beautiful person I know, inside and out. Sometimes when I think about how her life turned out, I want to cry. At sixteen, she was so full of life. Now she's working as the receptionist at the dentist's office. She always told me that I looked like she did when she was my age. I'm tall, but not too tall, about 5'5. I have long dark hair, but blue eyes and dark lashes. I used to think that I'd ruined my mum's life, but she always insisted that she wouldn't have life any other way. But still, I can't help but feel guilty. That's because she had me when she was only sixteen. That's only a year older than I am now. Once her boyfriend, my father, found out she was pregnant, he got scared and left her. And once she told her parents, they freaked out so much, that they kicked her out and call her a disgrace, among other things. My mother told me that they were very religious, and she's never seen either of them since. After that, she got some help from some older friends, and here we are now. Our life is not what some people would call perfect, but we like it like this just fine. Well, of course we'd like to win the lottery, so my mother would never have to work for her sleazy boss again, but we can keep dreaming. But for the meantime, I was going to go to school, get a scholarship to a good university, and become a doctor so I could buy my mother a mansion. Of course, life never turns out the way you want, and I was about to find that out big time.